


Just As Well They Never See The Hate That's In Your Head

by creatureofhobbit



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-20
Updated: 2014-04-20
Packaged: 2018-01-20 03:59:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1495759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/creatureofhobbit/pseuds/creatureofhobbit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cashmere realises she can no longer protect Gloss and her other relatives through her prostitution.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just As Well They Never See The Hate That's In Your Head

**Author's Note:**

> Warning for forced prostitution

Cashmere sometimes wonders how her life would have been different had she made another choice, had she told President Snow she wouldn’t do it in the same way that Johanna Mason had. Johanna had actually gone to Cashmere at one Games and asked her how she could bring herself to prostitute herself for Snow. Cashmere had turned and looked at her and asked her how could she not have done?

Cashmere had braced herself for the usual flow of invective from Johanna in response to this; however, Johanna had simply turned and walked out. Finnick Odair had then rounded on her, asking her how she could have said that.

“I’m only saying what you aren’t saying yourself,” Cashmere had pointed out. “You and I both know that we do it for the exact same reason. You to protect Annie, and your family, me to protect mine. She could have protected hers as well instead of telling Snow to get lost, but she chose not to.”

“And don’t you think she’s been living with that ever since?” Finnick snapped, before turning away from her to follow Johanna.

For a minute, Cashmere thought about running after Finnick to try and explain. Then she decided not to bother. Why would he even listen to her? Sometimes, Cashmere wondered if there was a part of Finnick that understood how she felt, but most of the time she thought there was nothing more to him than the pretty-boy Capitol’s darling presented to the media.

The truth was, she hated Johanna Mason, for the fact that she had the guts to say a lot of things that Cashmere thought herself but had always been too afraid to speak aloud. She hated a lot of the other mentors too, but not to the same extent, for the way they all banded together and excluded the mentors from 1 and 2, the “Career tributes” as they called them. Maybe if just one of them took any time to try and get to know Cashmere as a person rather than the Career tribute they perceived her as, they’d understand her better, understand why she did what she did.

Maybe Johanna hadn’t believed President Snow when he said it, but Cashmere did. Angora, her mentor, had told her the story of Haymitch Abernathy, the drunk from Twelve, and what had happened to his family. After she’d met with Snow, Cashmere had wanted to turn on Angora, demand of her whether the same thing had happened to her and why she hadn’t told her. Now, she understood that Angora had been trying to warn her in her own way by telling her Haymitch’s story.

Gloss would have warned her if Snow had approached him, Cashmere was sure of it. But he hadn’t, although he was forever dropping hints about it. “Two for the price of one”, he would say, talking about how much the people of the Capitol would give for a night with both siblings. Other times, he’d remark that Gloss’s victor status wouldn’t save him if Cashmere didn’t cooperate. (Cashmere was reminded of this the night of Snow’s announcement that the tributes for the Quarter Quell would be reaped from the existing victors. Gloss’s status wouldn’t save him whether she cooperated or not.)

She’d go through the motions with whoever happened to be the highest bidder, switch off her emotions, telling herself she was doing it to protect her family, especially Gloss. Was this how Finnick Odair did it, she wondered, or did he really enjoy the attention? Not that she was ever going to ask. As long as she was there, agreeing to sell herself, Snow wouldn’t try to sell Gloss. That was the deal, and Cashmere had kept to her side of it. So far, Snow seemed to have kept to his.

Until the announcement of the Quarter Quell.

At the end of the 74th Hunger Games, Cashmere and Gloss had sat watching, sat slightly apart from the other mentors following an altercation between Gloss and Chaff over whether or not Chaff should have authorised Haymitch to give his tribute the sponsor gift that was meant for Chaff’s own tribute before Marvel had killed her. They had watched as Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark had prepared to take the nightlock berries before the announcement that they were joint victors.

When the Quarter Quell was announced, and everyone realised that this was the way Snow was going to respond to Katniss’s actions, Cashmere realised that she hated Katniss Everdeen, too. Yes, she hated her because she realised that if Katniss had not made that decision, President Snow would not have taken the decision to reap that year’s tributes from the pool of existing victors. But she also hated her for having the guts to stand up to the Capitol in a way that Cashmere did not. There had never been a pair of siblings in a Games together before, so there had never been a situation where it would come down to the two of them. This time, it really might. And Katniss Everdeen’s nightlock trick was never going to work again. Everyone knew what had happened to Seneca Crane after he’d gone back to the new rule and allowed Katniss and Peeta both to win. No one was ever going to allow both Cashmere and Gloss to be saved.

Cashmere choked on her words as she spat out the crap about how grateful she was for the kindness the Capitol had shown her and Gloss. She had tried so hard to protect Gloss from being pulled into Snow’s world in the way that she had been. Yet there was nothing she could do to protect him now. There was every chance that Cashmere would have the choice to save Gloss or to save herself, and she honestly didn’t know what she would do if it ended up being between the two of them.

She’d gone into this in the first place so Gloss wouldn’t have to. Now she realised that there was nothing more she could do to keep him safe. So she took pleasure in spitting at Katniss Everdeen flouncing around in that ridiculous wedding dress. If it wasn’t for her, she wouldn’t be standing here now.


End file.
